An Earth-grazing fireball is a fireball, a very bright meteor that enters Earth’s atmosphere and leaves again. Some fragments may impact Earth as meteorites, if the meteor starts to break up or explodes in mid-air. These phenomena are then called Earth-grazing meteor processions and bolides. Famous examples of Earth-grazers are the 1972 Great Daylight Fireball and the Meteor Procession of July 20, 1860.
Frederic Edwin Church, The Meteor of 1860. In 2010, it was determined to be an Earth-grazing meteor procession.
Sky photo with the Earth-grazing meteoroid of 13 October 1990, as the light track across the picture going from the south to the north, taken at Červená hora (Czech Republic), one of the stations of the European Fireball Network.
A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space.
Meteoroids are distinguished as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than meteoroids are classified as micrometeoroids or space dust. Many are fragments from comets or asteroids, whereas others are collision impact debris ejected from bodies such as the Moon or Mars.
Meteoroid embedded in aerogel; the meteoroid is 10 µm in diameter and its track is 1.5 mm long
2008 TC3 meteorite fragments found on February 28, 2009, in the Nubian Desert, Sudan
Meteor seen from the site of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA)
A meteor of the Leonid meteor shower; the photograph shows the meteor, afterglow, and wake as distinct components
